1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and a teaching aid system for teaching the spelling and pronunciation of any language.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The majority of written and spoken languages comprise series of words that are made up of a combination of letters of an alphabet. There is however a problem in learning the language in that the letters of the alphabet are pronounced quite differently depending upon their use in combination. The combination of letters of the alphabet, including certain single uses of letters, are phonetically characterized and with a majority of languages the students must not only know the written script of the language but must know how to pronounce the language in its phonological form.
There are a number of systems for teaching languages and in particular the English language, which incorporates the use of both alphabetical notations and phonological methodologies, i.e. it relates to phonetics. One such system for itemizing and selecting various combinations of linguistic sound units to assist students in a particular language to effectively read and pronounce is the International Phonetic Alphabet I.P.A. Another system is the Daniel Jones English Pronunciation System, which incorporates phonemes, i.e. a minimum significant sound unit, comprising vowels and consonants.
When students and particularly young children learn to read and write a language, there is a problem of identifying the phonological characteristics of the language in a manner that the child can readily single out from the alphabetical notations of the language the phonetical pronunciation. Letters of the alphabet are fairly distinctive and have such common usage that it does not take long for a child or student to learn to recognize each letter. However, the pronunciation within the variations of the alphabetical transcriptions is not so easily conceivable and has no common representation which a child would readily comprehend when learning to read or pronounce. This fusion of the phonetical pronunciation and alphabetical transcriptions which becomes a difficulty and problem for the learner to cognitively develop his linguistic abilities to read and pronounce readily can be broken down by this invention, which uses a teaching aid as a device to draw out the embedded phonetic pronunciation of the language from its alphabetical notations dividing the phonetic pronunciation and the alphabetical notations clearly into two distinguishable and identifiable components: The phonological form and the written form. Previous systems have been developed, but are limited for use with the English language. Thus U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,932 discloses phonetics system for the English language including a plurality of tiles for learning the sounds of English words by associating vowels associated with the sounds of vowels alone, vowels in diagraphs, vowels in diphthongs, vowels in vowel/consonant combinations, vowels in vowel combinations and vowels in vowel patterns with colors that identify each of these vowel sounds as they commonly occur in English words.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,426,351 discloses a font of English of alphabetical letters for teaching of spelling; each letter of the font has the shape of the standard letter of the alphabet to which it corresponds and shading is used to suggest its pronunciation. Underlines and dots are also used for additional pronunciation characteristics, such as dipthongs and digraphs. U.S. Pat. No. 3,715,812 discloses, as a phonic dictionary, a book having a color coded symbol system comprising a non-displaceable English alphabet letters applicable only to the English language for different language sounds, as such letters have in different words for pronunciation, reading and learning of such English language words. U.S. Pat. No. 1,732,980 discloses an educational device for teaching spelling, but not pronunciation and which comprises a plurality of cards all of uniform shape with a letter of the alphabet printed on each card, consonant letter cards being printed in one color and vowel letter cards being printed in colors which are different from each other and from the consonant letter color.